Ontario loses 146K jobs in January amid COVID-19 public health measures

About 73 per cent of Canada's job losses for January can be found in Ontario, according to a new report by Statistics Canada.

The national agency's latest Labour Force Survey shows that after seven consecutive months of job gains, Ontario's employment declined by about 146,000.

The survey uses the week for Jan. 6 to Jan. 15 as a reference week, a time in which restaurants and gyms were shuttered in the province and other businesses were under strict capacity limits.

Ontario's unemployment rate has now grown to about 7.3 per cent as a result.

The majority of the job losses—just over 100,000—were part-time positions. Statistics Canada also said the job losses primarily impacted youth between the ages of 15 to 24 and women between the ages of 25 to 54.

About 108,000 of the jobs lost were in the Greater Toronto Area, according to the report, bringing the region's unemployment rate to about 8.8 per cent.

This is an increase of about 1.9 percentage points from the month before.

In total, Canada lost about 200,000 jobs in January 2022, marking the largest drop since this time last year.